Long before he moved to Portugal, Nick Houwen was a regular visitor to the Algarve.
The Dutch market, by comparison, is crowded. “The market in the Netherlands is very strict,” he says. “There are lots of people in real estate, so the margins are controlled. You don’t have the chances there that you have in Portugal.”
Casa Vista Real Estate grew out of that comparison. The company is a small residential developer focused on modern homes in the western Algarve, founded by three partners: Luciano de Vries, Nick Houwen and Jesper van der Heide, who goes by Jesse. It is currently preparing its first project of its own.
Who does what
Casa Vista’s founders have organised the business around the life of a development, from the first conversation about a plot to the final sale.
Houwen works at both ends. He is the one out looking for deals and building the network of contacts that turns up land and buildings with potential. Once a project is finished, he takes over again for sales and marketing. He describes himself as a numbers person, though more in his head than on paper.
The structuring in between falls to Luciano de Vries. According to Houwen, De Vries is the partner most involved in finance and in licensing the plots the company buys, the stage that turns a promising piece of land into an approved, funded project.
Jesse van der Heide is the third co-founder of Casa Vista Real Estate.
The split means each phase of a project has a clear owner. In a market where delays can stack up between buying land, drawing plans, securing a licence and starting construction, that clarity is practical rather than cosmetic.
It is also a full-time commitment. Since leaving the Netherlands, Houwen and De Vries have given their working hours to property development in Portugal, with their own investments and charity work running alongside. Both have raised funds for the Pangea Trust, a UK-registered charity turning a 1,000-acre estate in the Alentejo into a sanctuary for elephants. It is currently home to Julie, described by the charity as Portugal’s last circus elephant.
Building slowly on purpose
A company preparing its first project makes its hardest decisions early: which land to buy, what to pay and what can realistically be licensed. Casa Vista’s founders are frank about the obstacles.
“You can buy something here, go to an architect and an engineer, make a plan,” Houwen says. “But if you’re not on top of it, it can easily take years.”
The rules are changing, if slowly. A 2024 reform known as the Simplex Urbanístico gave councils maximum deadlines to decide licence applications, from 120 to 200 working days depending on the size of the project, with automatic approval if they miss them, according to idealista. Since January 2026, an online licensing platform has been mandatory in all 308 municipalities. Whether that shortens timelines on the ground in the Algarve is something Casa Vista’s first project will test.
Patience also shapes how Houwen negotiates. Sellers and agents in the Algarve often tell buyers that other bids are on the table and a decision is needed now. Houwen’s response is to walk away. “I don’t want to join this race, which drives the prices up,” he says. “So I have to wait a lot.”
Trust, in his view, works the same way. Asked what it means in a market like this, he keeps it short: keeping your word, and accepting that it comes with time. When Casa Vista has its first homes to sell, he says, the company will be fully open with buyers about the process, because honesty saves everyone time.
His advice to any foreigner buying in the Algarve follows from that: always involve a lawyer, because a home with licensing problems can be easy to buy for cash and very hard to sell to someone who needs a mortgage.
Why the western Algarve
Casa Vista concentrates on the Barlavento, the western half of the region, with particular interest in the area around Ferragudo in the municipality of Lagoa. The former fishing village sits on the Arade estuary opposite Portimão, guarded by the Fort of São João do Arade, built to keep pirates and privateers out of the river mouth. In 2011 the whole parish had fewer than 2,000 residents.
The same municipality holds one of the best-known stretches of the Algarve coast. The Seven Hanging Valleys trail runs 5.7 kilometres from Praia de Vale Centeanes to Praia da Marinha, following an almost continuous line of cliffs broken only by valleys that end above sea level, according to Lagoa’s municipal council.
For Houwen, the coast itself is the argument. “If you compare it to Spain, the beaches, first of all, are very nice. You have very high cliffs,” he says. “And there are no beach clubs like you have in Marbella or Ibiza, because they are really protecting the beaches. Every restaurant you see on the beach is literally on wooden poles.”
He also wants to correct a common misconception. Many Dutch people, he says, think the Algarve is only Albufeira, “a place where young people go to party.” The coast Casa Vista works on is quieter and, in his words, “still very unpolished.” In winter, he points out, there are near-empty beaches to walk on, and the weather is still good.
Turismo do Algarve reported that only 38.1% of the region’s 5.34 million tourist-accommodation guests in 2025 arrived during the peak season, the lowest share on record. For a developer selling homes rather than holidays, a region that stays busy beyond August broadens the pool of people who might want to live there.
Price is part of the appeal too. Compared with a city like Los Angeles, he says, the Algarve remains affordable, and the climate weighs heavily for buyers coming from abroad.
A different kind of foreign buyer
Three incentives that once drew foreign money to Portuguese property have gone in three years.
Portugal removed property purchases as a route to its Golden Visa in 2023, as part of a housing policy package aimed at rising prices. The Non-Habitual Resident tax regime closed to new applicants on 1 January 2024. Its replacement, the Tax Incentive for Scientific Research and Innovation, is narrower: a flat 20% rate on employment and self-employment income from eligible activities for ten years, according to EY. And since May 2026, non-resident buyers have paid a flat 7.5% property transfer tax (IMT) on home purchases, without the usual deductions, idealista reported.
Foreign buying has slowed nationally. Purchases by non-residents fell for a third straight year in 2025, to 8,471 transactions, and dropped another 10.3% year on year in the second quarter of 2026, according to INE figures analysed by idealista.
The Algarve has held its share better than most. Non-residents still accounted for 20.1% of homes bought in the region in 2025 and 31.3% of the value, according to INE data reported by Barlavento. The region took almost 30% of all non-resident home purchases in Portugal.
Without the visa and tax routes, the case for buying rests more heavily on the place itself: the climate, the coast, the cost of living, and a community that, in Houwen’s experience, makes newcomers welcome. “Portugal really accepts foreigners. They are happy with them,” he says. Along the coast, he adds, English is generally very good, at least within 15 minutes inland.
Where the next buyers come from
Today, Houwen says, the Irish and the British dominate among foreign buyers in the Algarve. He expects that to change.
In May 2025, United Airlines launched a seasonal nonstop route between Newark and Faro, the first direct link between the Algarve and the United States, flying four times a week in summer. Houwen has noticed the effect. “Lots of Americans are coming, because they see the climate here is better and it’s much more affordable,” he says. “In a couple of years, I think the Canadians and Americans will be quite dominant in buying.”
He contrasts the welcome in Portugal with Spain, where residents in several cities have protested against mass tourism in recent years. “Over here, they welcome [foreigners],” he says.
What comes next
As its first development takes shape, Casa Vista plans to build its own public voice, with the company blog and new social channels written by the founders themselves.
For people who have not yet seen the region, Houwen has an invitation. Portugal, he says, is affordable, the food is good and the people are friendly. “Just come and see it,” he says.
For three founders who left a crowded market for one with room to grow, that invitation doubles as the business case. The western Algarve they chose to build in is cliffs, fishing villages and beaches that are almost empty in winter, a long way from the resort image many visitors still bring with them.
